Trying to restore its image of a fair selection board after facing charges of corruption for years, the Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC) has come up with a unique idea to conduct a fair recruitment process.
For the interview of Punjab state civil services competitive examination 2015, the PPSC issued a warning to all the candidates who qualified the written examination and are about to appear for the interview that anyone who is found approaching a tout or try recommendation, would get negative marking. Similarly, anyone who helps in nabbing a “tout who claims to fix the interview for the candidates”, would get favourable marking in the interview.
To highlight the point, the chairman of the PPSC, Lt. Gen. T.S. Gill (Retd), met all the 264 candidates who have qualified written examination of PPSC and are about face interview soon. “I have told the candidates clearly that there would be incentive for the candidates who help us nab any tout, even though there are no fixed marks for a person helping us catch a tout, it could be around 5 per cent. Similarly, we will keep an eye on candidates who try recommendations. Such candidates would get negative marking,” said Lt. Gen. Gill.
The purpose of the meeting and new guidelines is to restore the faith in the selection process of PPSC. “People keep calling for recommendations. We want to tell everyone clearly that days of corruption in the PSSC selection process are long gone,” he added.
The PPSC has seen many scandals in the past, but the biggest of them all was when in 2002, the chairman, Ravider Pal Singh Sidhu, was arrested for cash-for-job scam. Later in 2015, he was sentenced to seven years.
A team of Punjab vigilance bureau had caught Mr Sidhu red-handed in Chandigarh while accepting a bribe of Rs 5 lakh from an excise inspector in lieu of nominating him to Punjab Civil Service. The inspector had struck a deal for Rs 35 lakh.
During a raid on Sidhu’s bank lockers in April 2002, Rs 8.16 crore was recovered. The major fallout of the scam was that the Punjab government cancelled the recruitment of 639 people who had been selected during Sidhu’s tenure.
